It Started at 104
by Totschafe
Summary: Sho Minamimoto was a Player himself, once upon a time. Judging by how he played the Game, it isn't hard to imagine why he became a Reaper.
1. Pre Day 01: Broken Skullz

Hiya! This is my very first TWEWY fanfic that I have been itching to write since early April. I really hope you enjoy it because I've certainly enjoyed the beginning of the writing process involved!

It's certainly going to be a comedy with some romance, some angst, some drama, and definitely some ramen. :3

DISCLAIMER: I don't own TWEWY. If I did, there would be a sequel called 'NAKED SHO' which would have no nudity whatsoever. But I bet you its sales would be high. :

* * *

_"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." -John Louis von Neumann_

_

* * *

_Life had two meanings to Sho Minamimoto. The first was that Life was composed of millions of complex calculations and equations, all adding up to some supreme solution that not even the most brilliant mathematician could ever figure in their lifetimes. The second meaning was beauty. The calculations that came with Life were absolutely beautiful, like some frail filigree made of the thickest and least malleable of metals. Astounded by Life, it was certainly a surprise when his came to an abrupt stop.

It wasn't so much _abrupt_ as it was just _sudden_. Sho had actually seen it coming, almost walking headlong into what was obviously his untimely demise. Yet even his brilliant mind could not predict how fast a car really did go. He was sure he could have fit in maybe two (point five six nine eight three four) seconds of reconsideration. No, he only got in a half second to consider before he was promptly mowed down by a Honda going well beyond the speed limit. He faintly recalled his head smashing onto the pavement ("That's going to leave a nasty mark!") and had a phantom feeling that perhaps his legs were never going to work again. That was all drowned out by the sirens in the distance and the humming of people talking around him.

It was in that moment of time that Sho believed that he was somewhere else that wasn't a road in the middle of Shibuya, laying face down on the pavement as blood from his chest slowly creeped towards his face ("Well, at least I don't _taste_ anemic."). For just that moment, he saw flickers of light in the corners of his eyes. The sounds around him didn't sound like a panicking crowd. The smell was no longer of his own bodily fluids or burnt asphalt. In fact, there was nearly _nothing_ to figure. It was almost peaceful if he had to choose a word.

Of course, peace only lasts so long before one is hastily loaded on to a stretcher and rushed away much to the dismay of those who certainly had the morbid fascination to see one's face smashed in. Sho surely didn't appreciate it, from the IV jammed into his arm to a nurse who was practically squealing orders to an EMT who looked like he was about to be sick ("All over my school uniform? Really?") but held it in for the sake of looking professional. It was mostly a blur beyond that. Sho wasn't too sure of what was going on. For all he knew, he was still walking home from school, degrading the people who lowered the value of life and deciding it certainly wasn't worth living.

Beyond the screaming of his mother behind the hazy, fading cloud of consciousness, beyond the antiseptic smell of the hospital mixing with the decaying smell of his own blood, beyond the feeling of his body getting cold, there was something _white_. It seemed dull at first, like candlelight from a distance. Very slowly, it grew in luminosity until it was damn near _blinding_. Sho wanted to cover his eyes, but his arms couldn't seem to move. It was just _there_.

"Sho," someone called from within the light. "Are you ready to get going?"

"Who the factor are you?" Sho asked, finding it odd that his mouth had never opened in the first place.

The person hidden in the white light just laughed and Sho could make out a darker blur (though not much darker) that slowly approached him. "You'll know me in due time Sho. Until then, I think it's time you got out of here, don't you think?"

"Your timing couldn't be any zetta better," Sho said, a smirk in his voice without his mouth ever moving.

"That's what I wanted to hear."

The screaming, the smells, and the light all disappeared at once—like lights in a movie theater all turning off before the screen comes to life. There was no feeling and nothing to wrap any sense around. Sho felt as though he was either in a deep sleep or just didn't exist at all. He almost liked it. Then the projector rolled in the form of a person-to-pavement view not so different from what he had seen earlier, except this pavement certainly didn't have blood on it and he certainly didn't have any broken bones.

And he _certainly_ wasn't in the middle of the famous Scramble Crossing, last he remembered.

As he stood up to brush himself off, something vibrated in a pocket of jeans he certainly didn't remember wearing earlier. He reached in and pulled out a glossy silver phone, the tiny screen on the front alight with a small icon of an envelope. He flipped it open and read the contents.

_Get a partner._

_Get it together._

_Get moving._

_See you at 104 in an hour._

_If you don't go by my rules, you're history._

_-The Reapers_

Sho Minamimoto's new life began at that moment. He didn't know the rules of this game quite yet, and he certainly didn't know what had happened. Yet something about this felt extremely calculated and extremely beautiful. Sho thought he had finally found what may have been the beginning of the journey to find the meaning of life. Of course, he found it odd that it started at the 104 Building of all places.

But all good journeys have to start _somewhere_.


	2. Day 01: 104

* * *

_"Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there." -Virginia Burden_

_

* * *

_

Decoding messages and cryptograms was something Sho prided himself on. He knew hundreds of complex ciphers and had even figured a way to turn common quadratic equations into a perfectly formed alphabet, all phonetic of course. Symbolism was easy to catch on to. Hidden meanings were in the same range. The way he figured it, the short and simple message that came on his cell phone had to be _riddled_ with meanings that were more than vision-deep. As he stood in the crowded Scramble Crossing, he was totally absorbed by the riddle that was _bound _to be there.

That is, until he felt a hot pain race across his right hand that made him almost drop the phone. It fell about ten centimeters until quick reflexes caught it and he sighed in relief, shifting the device to his left hand as to examine the other. It surprised him that embedded in his flesh was a series of numbers set like a digital clock, forming a dark violet and red tattoo-like image. The image shifted constantly, counting down seconds, all starting from the offending numbers—**60:00**.

"What the factor is this?" he grimaced, trying to shake the image and even going as far as to attempt to wipe the markings from his hand on his shirt ("Mom would kill me for this."). It didn't help in the least and instead wasted him three minutes, which he figured could have been helpful in decoding the rules. Instead, he focused more on the problem at hand. The message had mentioned finding a partner, and he was certainly partner_less_. It wasn't as if he liked cooperating with others in the first place. Yet he had a suspicion that his very survival was at hand. The first idea that popped into his head took the form of a statue of a _very_ familiar dog by the name of Hachiko. Without bidding them to do anything, his legs began moving in the direction of Hachiko's famous statue—Tokyo's favorite meeting place. If the other Tokyoites had the same idea he had, any person stuck in this game would go there.

Sho found it odd that there were other people walking around him but not actually seeing him. Even odder was the fact that he could hear them, and then something _beyond_ them, like a strange whisper. However, he knew he couldn't bother with that, as there was certainly a situation at hand. He began running as fast as his legs could carry him, brushing by people who couldn't hear, see, or feel him.

'_Maybe I like it this way,_' he thought, glancing down at the numbers counting down on his hand. '_The uniformity of the numbers, people not seeing me… It might not be so bad._'

"Hey!" someone shouted suddenly, catching Sho off guard as he ungracefully careened into a hunk of cold metal. ("Better than cement.") He picked himself off and found that he had reached Hachiko without even realizing it. The metal dog stared ahead, its face determined yet expectant. Suddenly, he remembered the shout and whipped around to see where it had come from. This time, there were people actually looking at him, some covering their mouths from laughter and some looking downright horrified.

"Umm…" he said, putting one hand (the one with the numbers) behind his head and smiling.

One person, a young girl wearing a skirt with more frills than a set of old curtains, walked up to him, a younger male trailing behind her. "Are you okay?" she asked, full of honest concern.

"Yeah, just wasn't looking where I was going."

"Oh," she responded, nodding. "So you're a Player too?"

Sho arched an eyebrow and looked down at her hand, half-hidden by the large skirt. Beyond the frills and pleats, there was certainly a set of dark numbers, counting down just like his own. "Yeah…" he said, his gold eyes locked onto the numbers. "But I don't get it. How can you see me?"

The girl's expression turned morose and she looked down at the young boy beside her. Slowly, she brought doe brown eyes up to look at Sho. "You don't know what happened?"

"Uh, not really. I remember being in the hospital and then I was in the Scramble Crossing. Pretty zetta confusing if you ask me."

"Mister," the young boy piped up, grasping one of the girl's pleats in a small hand. "You died."

Shock was attached to those two words, shooting through Sho like a well-aimed bullet. At first, his mind seemed to stall (something uncommon with him) and then slowly melded into a series of equations bent on decoding yet another mysterious message. Flashing images of Cartesian coordinates and quadratic equations flickered across his mind's eye, yet none of them fit what had been said. He was _dead_, but was standing right _there_. His chest was heaving with breaths and his heart was racing, hammering against his ribcage like a prisoner gone mad. There was no way that he could have _perished_.

"That's impossible," he concluded. "_Improbable_. No solution."

"He's right," the girl said quietly, looking even more grim. "We're in the Game because we're all dead. Didn't you hear the rules?"

"No," he snapped back, feeling panic rise in him. It was a cold, empty feeling that he didn't want. His fingertips began to twitch and his knees felt as though their chemical composition had been switched to gelatin. "No, I didn't hear anything."

Behind the girl appeared another boy, this one looking odder than the others standing around. He looked to be two or three years younger than Sho with a heavily diluted appearance. Watery blue eyes peered through wavy white-blond hair, all completed with paper-white skin. Sho swore he hadn't seen him before, yet felt familiarity with him, especially in the languid approach he gave. "Is he okay?" he asked in a low voice that didn't match his body.

"He doesn't know about the Game," the girl said over her shoulder.

The pale boy put his hands on his jean-clad hips and looked over Sho once before smirking. "He isn't going to last a day."

The panic that had been carried in Sho's blood cells felt as though it had all gone back and changed places with rage. His knees regained bone structure and he stood up straight. "Listen," he said, pointing at the pale boy as though preparing to spear him. "I may not know about this stupid Game or whatever, but I can bet you that I can factor it out faster than any of you hectopascals."

"Ooo, we've got a mathematician on board," the pale boy quipped saucily.

"Better than having one yoctogram of a brain cell," Sho sneered back.

"Atomically speaking, that's incorrect."

"Oh wow, someone knows atomic structure. Big surprise."

The pale boy grinned suddenly before walking up to Sho, the eyes of everyone on him. Slowly, he raised a hand to Sho as though he wanted to shake hands. There was an unreadable glimmer in his eyes. "You're interesting at least. Care to be partners?"

Gold-tawny eyes regarded the pale hand, numbers ticking away on the palm. With hesitation, he placed his opposing hand in the others, shaking it once. "Fine, but not because I want to. I just want to figure this equation out and apparently need someone else to assist me."

"Well good. I know the rules of the Game and you're brutish enough to follow what I say. I think we'll make a good a team. My name is Kiryuu Yoshiya, but you can call me Joshua."

"Minamimoto Sho," the mathematician responded, sneering down at the shorter boy.

"So you'll make a pact with me?"

"Whatever keeps me going," Sho replied.

At that, there was a strange blue light that surrounded them that left Sho virtually breathless ("How do the dead breathe anyway?") and gave him the strangest case of vertigo he had ever experienced. He closed his eyes to fight it off but opened them at an odd sensation that pierced him through the chest. It wasn't painful but it certainly wasn't comfortable. It felt like a warm rod had been shoved into his heart, taking up more room than necessary. Once the light receded, he looked to Joshua curiously. "What the hell was that?"

"We made a pact."

"Did you have to stab me through the heart like that?"

"I didn't do anything to you. That was just a spiritual bonding."

Sho regarded him suspiciously, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. "We're not married or anything, right?"

Joshua snorted and shook his head. "No, you just support me and I support you. Oh, but before we go anywhere, do you have any pins?"

Sho blinked once, then twice. He glanced at his coat, shirt, and pants before shaking his head. "No, I don't think so."

Sighing, Joshua looked up and down before pointing somewhere above Sho's vision line. "Take off your hat."

"Um, alright…" Sho did as he was asked, pulling the hat off and examining it. There, just above the brim of the hat was a single black pin, boasting a tastefully tribal whitish-silver skull. He opened his mouth to say something but no words came out.

"It's your Player Pin," Joshua explained, catching onto Sho's confusion. "It signifies what you are, allows you to go into places with Reaper decal, and can serve as your scanner."

"Woah, back up there blondie. I'm not quite equating all this. I got the 'significance' part. What about the other two?"

As though annoyed, Joshua sighed and flicked a loose tendril of hair from his face in a feminine matter that made Sho question a thing or two. "You know no one can see you except for other Players. Reapers—those are the people who run the Game—can place a decal on certain places where you can interact with the living. As for a scanner, just press the pin and you can read minds."

Sho had been half-absorbing the information until the mind-reading portion had been mentioned. Instantly, his right index finger tapped the pin. Within a second, the whispers he had been hearing earlier came in like regular conversations. He could pinpoint certain things, such as a young woman walking by Hachiko with her arms crossed and her face morose.

'_I'm getting such a creepy feeling here. Why did it get so cold all of a sudden?_'

He turned his attention to another girl not too many yards away who was examining her cell phone with fervent interest. '_He's going to text back soon, right? I mean, it might have been a little rude to decline going to the sumo match but he shouldn't get too mad. It's just some fat guys hitting each other anyways._'

Sho removed his finger from the pin and grinned. "That was zetta sweet."

"Glad you enjoyed it," Joshua replied with barely any emotion. "But you should have already guessed that there is much more to the Game than mind-reading and interacting with the living."

"Well yeah, it was pretty zetta obvious. I figured that you have to make it to whatever place they make you go or else you get to divide by zero pretty quick."

"Exactly. Now, you're going to have to protect yourself. And you seem like the kind of person who would be good at using psychs."

"I did not understand an integer of what you just said."

"Psychs are pins with powers in them. Some people can use certain ones while some can hardly use them and have to rely on another form of psychic fighting. I'm guessing with your brainpower, it won't be hard for you." He finished by reaching into his pocket and holding out two pins to Sho. One was that of a small flame, hardly anything special. The other was a silver thing that resembled a blade or perhaps a gust of wind. Hesitantly, Sho took them and examined them.

"And what the factor do you use these digits for?"

A strange smirk appeared on Joshua's face. "Oh, you'll see. Now we should get to 104 while we still can, yeah?"

"Fine," Sho said, pinning the two pins to the brim of his hat beside the metal eyelets. They seemed to work out well there and were easy to access as long as he always kept his hat on.

Joshua began walking, wishing other Players a quick 'good luck' before going in the direction of 104. Sho walked beside him, looking at the ground and attempting to equate what he had been told. There was certainly much more danger than just being erased. Joshua had hinted at something that was bound to be sinister.

* * *

They walked back out to the Scramble Crossing and up to where the 104 building lay ahead. However, a strange man was standing in their way, the upper half of his face obscured by a red hoodie. He wore a gray messenger bag and some gray cargo pants. However, Sho hardly noticed this as his eyes were far too focused on the strange black wings protruding from his back. Slowly, he turned to them, the revealed part of his face turning up in a somewhat sickening smile. "Hey there Players! I'm guessing you want to get through here?"

"Yes, that would be lovely," Joshua said.

"Well, you're out of luck unless you kill two Noise right here in this crossing."

Joshua just shrugged and sighed. "Very well. It'll give Sho here a good chance to exercise his psychs. Sho dear, how about you scan the place for Noise?"

"Only if you never call me 'dear' again," the mathematician shot back, tapping the skull pin on his hat once. The whispers opened again, but this time with much stranger results. Shimmering in the distance were strange red images, floating amongst the nearly countless people in the crossing. They were in many sizes and patterns and Sho deduced that the smaller ones would be easier to handle. "Okay," he said. "Two small ones about one hundred yards away. Good enough?"

"Yup," Joshua said, following Sho's directions. Right before Sho's eyes, two silver and blue wolves seemed to appear out of nowhere, jumping around and snarling at them. Sho deduced two things from the situation.

There are no wolves in Tokyo.

There are no wolves in the entire world that have a tail _made_ of a tribal pattern.

No matter how he positioned the two facts (FOIL, factoring, fractions, dividing, PEMDAS…) there was no way that what took place before him could make any sense. For that matter, he didn't have time to deduce it anymore as one made a leap for him, silver claws jutting out and fangs bared. Sho barely had time to register the unintelligible shout from Joshua as he and the wolf made contact. He _certainly_ couldn't register the fact that in a flurry of wind, the wolf suddenly hit the asphalt with a sickening _crack_ before it seemed to fizzle away.

He slowly put his arm down that had been guarding his face (futilely, he figured) and looked around. Joshua was staring at him, dumbfounded—as was the Reaper. "What happened?" he finally asked, unable to figure it out.

"You stopped that Noise without even trying," Joshua responded. "That's almost unheard of. You must be a psych genius!"

"I… I don't even know what the factor you're talking about."

Joshua looked irritated for a moment, and then gained a calm expression. "Those wolves were something called Noise, or creatures that roam around the UG, which is the world we're in now. They possess people and objects, leading them to become cursed. Part of the Game is to get rid of Noise. It's difficult to fight them in the first place but you seemed to not even make a move and you destroyed one."

"So, am I like some kind of superhero now or what?"

Smirking, Joshua crossed his arms. "You can be a superhero if you stay alive until the end of the week."

"Seven days…" Sho muttered to himself, grimacing. "That's a lot of time."

"Speaking of which," Joshua said, holding up a hand flashing the numbers **10:02**. "We should get moving. We have one more set of Noise to defeat, which shouldn't be a problem for you, eh partner?"

"When you say it like that, you sound like a creeper," Sho quipped before turning to the final set of Noise. He focused on it and just as before, two wolves jumped in front of him, this time accompanied by a set of small green and violet frogs. Sho could not have imagined a world where amphibians would like quite so…_menacing_, but these frogs looked at him as though he was their prey. ("If I live through this, I'm giving up mathematics and becoming a Buddhist.")

Joshua was already at work trying to fight one of the wolves off. In that time, Sho took notice of a strange pumpkin-orange cell phone in his hand that remained open the entire time he was fighting. Other than the awful color, it seemed like a regular cell phone. The pale boy used a volley of bright blue and yellow orbs to fend the wolf off, successfully destroying it. Once it was gone, he flipped the cell phone shut, automatically making Sho assume it was definitely used in fighting.

However, he had taken too much time in assessing Joshua's fighting style to consider what was going on around him. Something cold, wet, and light touched his face and he turned just in time for a bubble to explode right by his nose. A putrid, swampy smell filled his nasal cavity, sending him backwards, reeling. He coughed a few times, trying to wipe the stench out. Suddenly, he was pushed onto the pavement by one of the remaining wolves, his head smacking off the hard surface ("Next to being a Buddhist, I'm going to travel on dirt roads _only_.") and causing small black dots to swim in front of his eyes. He snarled and delivered a hard kick to the wolf's abdomen, sending it back about a meter. However, it didn't seem phased and only angrier.

"Stupid mutt," Sho huffed, looking down at a rather disgusting drool stain on his jacket. He reached up onto his hat and experimentally tapped the flame pin, inching back a little in anxiousness. Just as he did it, a long spout of flame erupted from his other hand, hitting the wolf instantly and plowing it into a wall behind it. After a few more seconds of the inferno, the wolf dissipated along with the frogs accompanying it.

"Good work, Sho," Joshua said, waving at him pleasantly.

Sho just sneered at him again and started walking back to the Reaper, still rubbing his noise irritably. "I don't think I'm _ever_ getting that smell out of my nose. That was _sick_."

"You're going to have to get used to it because there are a lot more of those out there," Joshua replied before turning to the Reaper who shifted and sighed.

"Objective met. Wall clear!"

Both the Reaper and the wall disappeared as one, leaving a straight path to the 104 building. Joshua looked to Sho and smiled. "Mathematicians first."

Sho mockingly grinned. "No, ladies first, I _insist_."

"This is going to be a good week," Joshua mused pleasantly, walking up the street with a smirking genius behind him.

Once reaching the building, there was a short cold pain that shot across Sho's palm. He looked down and saw that the numbers had disappeared, much to his relief. Apparently Joshua's had done the same. "Alright," Sho said, clenching his fist and unclenching it, relieved at the lack of numbers. "So now what?"

"Well, I'm not sure yet. We finished our mission…" Joshua trailed off, opening his phone and eying it speculatively.

"Hey, what's with that phone?" Sho said suddenly. "I saw you with it open during the fight."

Pale blue eyes regarded the phone before glancing to the tan man beside him. "This? Well, let's just say that not all psychs are pins."

"You fight with it? How?"

"I'm yet to figure that out. In fact, I didn't know I could fight with it until we had the fight with the Noise. It just seemed…right to have it open. Then I found that I couldn't use my psychs if the phone was closed. Make sense?"

"Nope."

"Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyways, how about some ramen? Dogenzaka isn't far from here."

"We can eat?"

"Well yeah, we're not completely dead. Our digestive systems still function you know."

"Weird," Sho said before shrugging. "Yeah, ramen sounds fine to me."

"Okay, but you're buying."

Subconsciously digging into his pockets (while slowly perceiving that Josh was making him pay for something he hadn't even suggested), Sho shook his head. "I don't have any money."

"Ah, well then." Joshua held out a hand with about four thousand yen in it. "Think this will do?"

Golden eyes widened and Sho gaped at him. "Where the factor did you get that?"

"My secret," Joshua said, smiling eerily.

"Bet it was in the closet before you left," Sho murmured under his breath, hoping Joshua wouldn't hear him over the crowd. He didn't appear to but it was still up to speculation. He just smiled pleasantly and began walking in the direction of Dogenzaka, Sho following behind him.

* * *

"Sir? Twenty Players made it through today," a woman said quietly, peering through the limited light at a figure sitting in a large chair.

"Ah, more than expected. How many did we start out with?"

"Forty-five. Two Players reached the objective in record time."

"Oh?"

"Kiryuu Yoshiya and Minamimoto Sho. Most of the Players were confused and some didn't have the will to complete the mission. Those two took some time but made it for everyone else."

"Kiryuu is in this, eh?"

The woman raised an eyebrow, folding her arms. "You know him, sir?"

"I'm acquainted. He's quite the interesting one. I wonder how he will do."

"The Reaper at the first wall reported that the partnership he is in is…odd."

"I'd assume any partnership involving Kiryuu can be guaranteed to be out of the norm."

"The older one, Minamimoto, is apparently a psych genius. He used a psych without even touching his pin."

A low laugh resounded from the man sitting on the chair. "Ah, we haven't had one of those in a long time. No wonder Kiryuu chose him."

"Should I arrange for these two to be eradicated tomorrow?"

"No need. I'd like to keep them for about two more days with little effort used against them. I want to see for myself how they work."

"Very well, sir. Oh, have you planned out the mission for tomorrow?"

"Yes I have. You'll find all the details on the table next door." The woman nodded, bowed, and began walking towards the door leading into the next room until the man cleared his throat to get her attention. "Can you bring me a file on this Minamimoto? I want to see what it is we're dealing with."

"Of course sir," the woman responded before walking into the room.

The man leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on his chest and sighing contently. "Kiryuu is playing this time… Well, there's always time for a first time. I wish the best for his partner." He chuckled to himself and leaned back. "Tomorrow's mission should make for an interesting time."


End file.
